Official interference for Rangeview an odd hit vs. Cherry Creek

For those of you kind enough to read my offerings, you may recall that earlier this year I pointed out that there’s always a chance you can see something you’ve never seen before when attending a prep football game.

It happened to me again on Friday night.

On the first play of the fourth quarter, Steffen Johnson of Rangeview caught a 31-yard pass into Cherry Creek territory at Aurora Public Schools Stadium.

The fleet Johnson nabbed it between two Bruins defenders and it appeared he could have scored to tie the game at 20, then the Raiders had a chance for a PAT to take the lead.

However, and this is where it turned interesting, Johnson ran smack dab right into an official. The official went flying back, Johnson seemed surprised and he went down as the defenders converged.

I had never seen that before, certainly not that far down the field and away from the line of scrimmage.

Sure, officials can take a beating, as in players running into them, even getting hit by thrown balls.

But it almost always happens much closer to the line of scrimmage.

Thankfully, the official continued. Unfortunately, we’ll never know if Johnson would have scored.

As it was, a clearly frustrated Johnson was angry and he spiked the ball. He was flagged for it, as in minus-15 yards.

Rangeview eventually made it to the Bruins 4-yard line and had a first down, but failed to score.

How many times have you seen an official run over that far down the field?

The football officiating in this entire state is terrible. For all the work Tom Robinsons crew puts into basketball officiating, his crew lacks in football. This is extremely odd since Tom himself is a former Big 12 football official.

bronco

That official should really feel like a moron. They should have cut the kid some slack.

Uncle John

Thanks ref for steering the outcome of the game in Cherry Creek’s favor. What game were u officiating if u couldn’t manage to remove youself from the way of a 31 yard pass?

Footballfan77

In fairness, almost every call went against Creek in that game, and some were outragrously poor calls. So there was bad officiating both ways, big time!

Frankfurteagle

Neil, You’re a Creek fan. Do they have two different teams, Creek that played most of the season, and Son Of Creek that showed up to play last night? The Creek I saw play a couple times this year could not have beat Rangeview. Any thoughts?

Neil Devlin, originally from the Philadelphia area, has covered high school sports in Colorado for more than 30 years, writing about the people, athletes and events that encompass the Rocky Mountain prep sports world.